Widows' Watch (4 page)

“Oh?”

“Yes, my ancestors were Mongol warriors. I could well be descended from Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan. Which says something for the evolution of the human soul. Unfortunately, Boris never evolved. He could have been Attila the Hun. I think he always regretted having been assigned to an engineering rather than a fighting unit. The man's most cherished war memory was blowing up a bridge with a German army contingent on it, although he also expressed admiration for the Nazis. Good lord! The man was at war with harmless ground squirrels. I can't understand why you didn't arrest him for shooting them.”

“I never realized he was,” said Elena. “I never heard any gunshots in the neighborhood.”

“Well, he had a Machiavellian soul. He probably did his shooting while you were on duty. The rest of us certainly knew about it. And he frightened poor Dimitra into covering up for his cruelties against her.”

“You could have called the police yourself, you know,” said Elena.

“The fair Dimitra begged me not to. She said he'd kill both her and me if I reported him.”

Elena squinted at Omar. “Were you and Dimitra having an affair?” she asked.

“Only an affair of the soul, my dear. Of the mind. Not that I don't desire the adorable Mrs. Potemkin. I burn for her. Have you read the poetry of Omar Khayyam, whose namesake I am? ‘A jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and thou beside me singing in the wilderness.' Dimitra has a voice. You probably didn't know this. We could have made beautiful music together. Perhaps we still can. If she weren't addicted to regular sleeping hours, I'd rush over there right now and invite her to a movie. If it were forty or fifty years ago, we could have gone to a musical film. Has she ever told you about the Eugene Onegin movie made in—”

“Omar, I have to get home,” said Elena hastily. “It's certainly been nice to talk to you. And thank you for your—ah—frankness.”

“And thank you, my dear, for bringing the good news. I shall watch Dimitra's house from now until the time when, to paraphrase Byron, ‘she rises in beauty like the sun'—unless, of course, another sleep period comes upon me.”

Elena nodded. “You do that.” She bade him goodnight, handed back the empty glass, and walked home giggling as a result of the alcoholic kiwi-mango cider and Mr. Ashkenazi's poetic and forthrightly stated crush on Dimitra Potemkin. Of course, that made him a suspect, and he didn't have an alibi. Elena sighed. They'd need to work the neighborhood again to see if anyone had spotted him sneaking around the Potemkin house.

“Hi, Mom,” she said when she got home. “Found another suspect. Seems that Dimitra had a soul mate right here in the neighborhood.”

“Did she really?” said Harmony.

“Yep. He's ready to snap her up now that Boris is out of the way.”

“How romantic! And how fortunate for Dimitra. Now she won't be lonely.”

“You want her to marry someone who might have killed her husband?”

“Well, maybe she could settle for an affair until the case is solved,” said Harmony cheerfully. “And then there are social security considerations. Dimitra could lose hers if she . . .”

Trust Harmony to take delight in a weird idea. Dimitra Potemkin and Omar Ashkenazi having an affair. Over the chess set, no doubt.

Tuesday, September 28, 8:00 A.M.

“Elena was absolutely right when she said you're as handsome as her father,” said Harmony, smiling at Lieutenant Beltran, the head of Crimes Against Persons.

Elena suppressed a look of astonishment. She might have said Lieutenant Beltran looked like her father, Sheriff Ruben Portillo. Both were stocky, graying, middle-aged men. But handsome? Well, Elena supposed her mother had thought the sheriff handsome when she was a twenty-year-old hippie dropout from Berkeley, living on a commune outside Chimayo, and Ruben Portillo a twenty-three-year-old deputy sheriff raiding that commune's pot patch. The way her mother and father told the story, it was love at first sight between the unlikely pair, an Anglo flower child and a young Hispanic lawman whose family had lived in the Sangre de Cristos since Spanish colonial times.

Lieutenant Beltran seemed to be completely bowled over by Harmony. And why not? thought Elena. Her mother was a beautiful woman: still slender, white-skinned, blue-eyed, with long black silvered hair that hung to her waist, still wearing beads and bright, flowing clothes that she wove and designed herself. Harmony bowled over every man she met, including some young enough to be her sons. Lieutenant Beltran, smitten, was telling Harmony what a fine policewoman her daughter was. As if, ever since the acid bath case, he hadn't been treating Elena like an unwanted spider in a pfitzer juniper. It seemed as though every detective not out on the streets crowded around to meet Harmony, who had driven Elena to work after leaving the Penitentes' pickup for servicing at a Chevrolet dealership on Montana. She was telling them about the problems of loading and off-loading her loom.

“Men are so chivalrous,” she said. “I'm afraid some macho old fellow at Socorro Heights will want to help me and end up with a hernia.”

“I can take care of that problem,” said the lieutenant, who evidently didn't want to be outdone in machismo by some “old fellow.” “I'll put wheels on the loom for you and a winch on your truck.”

“Aren't you thoughtful,” said Harmony, beaming.

Elena decided that if her mother stayed in town a month, she'd probably talk Beltran into giving Elena sergeant's stripes without a civil service exam.

Tuesday, September 28, 8:45 A.M.

Before Leo and Elena could revisit Dimitra Potemkin, their sergeant, Manny Escobedo, sent them off on a car-jacking with injuries. Rosa Munoz, a single mother and college student with a job at Burger King and a full class-load, had been driving to the University of Texas at Los Santos around seven-thirty when a guy jumped in her car at the Delta light, smashed her head into the driver's side window, pushed her out onto the median strip, and drove away in her ‘85 VW. When they interviewed Rosa around nine at Thomason General, she said that the hijo de puta who'd knocked her out and stolen her car had a tattoo of the Virgin of Guadalupe on his right fist.

“Mano Alvarez,” said Elena. They picked him up playing street handball in the Lower Valley, had his picture taken and developed in the basement photo lab at headquarters so it wouldn't have the usual mug shot name and number, and took the photo along with five others to Rosa Munoz, who said, “Number three. They ought to cut off his hand. It's an insult to the Holy Mother.” They charged Mano with assault and grand theft auto. Case closed unless Auto Theft could find the car.

They didn't get to Dimitra until eleven o'clock, although she had called headquarters earlier to report the theft of a “czar's medal.” Elena and Leo interviewed Dimitra in her kitchen, where she was making cabbage rolls.

“For after the funeral?” Elena asked.

“For me,” said Dimitra. “I like cabbage rolls, and Boris would never let me freeze them. Now I'm going to make a whole year's worth and freeze every one.” She rolled cabbage leaves around another lump of ground meat mixed with mysterious ingredients. “Would you like a few?” she asked Elena.

Accepting would probably be considered a breach of ethics by Lieutenant Beltran, but he wouldn't complain if Harmony got the rolls. “Thanks,” Elena replied. “My mother adores ethnic food.”

“Peculiar woman,” said Dimitra. “My baba told me about women like that in the old country. Did you know your mother thinks she sees colors around people's heads? A gold circle, I could believe, if you're a saint or a member of the Holy Family, but colors? And she doesn't understand why I'm not putting on black and crying over Boris. But then she probably likes your father.”

“Speaking of families, Dimitra. Have you heard from Lance?” Elena asked. Detective Beto Sanchez had tried to reach the son, Lance, by telephone to set up an appointment. No luck.

Dimitra shook her head. “He wasn't answering his phone last night. And the English Department said this morning that he'd called in sick. I was real disappointed not to be able to tell him the good news.”

“You reported that something was missing besides the gun?” Leo reminded her.

Dimitra wiped her hands on a striped dish towel, thinking. “The czar's medal.” Obviously pleased that she'd remembered, she folded the towel, now spotted with bits of meat and herbs, and laid it neatly over the back of a tan plastic kitchen chair. Then she scooped up a huge glob of meat stuffing from a blue Pyrex bowl.

“Boris' family were czarists. He came to this country in ‘39, when he was seventeen. Chased out of Russia by the Communists—that's what he said. But maybe he ran so he wouldn't have to fight in Stalin's army. Didn't do him any good. He got drafted here in ‘41 and had to build roads

and bridges. You want a glass of tea? Bet you never had tea made in a samovar. Boris never let me offer refreshments. That zloy stareek!”

Elena and Leo declined with thanks. Dimitra looked disappointed. “Anyway, Boris spent most of the war in Europe; that's until he got the back of his head blown off and they put the plate in. When he got out of the hospital, he became a guard in a prison camp near here. Boris loved that—pushing Nazi officers around. Then he came home to Coney Island after the war, so handsome in his uniform.” She sounded wistful. “That's when he met me.”

Leo was showing signs of impatience, but Elena kept him from interrupting. With Dimitra so uncharacteristically talkative, they'd find out more about the family, hopefully something bearing on the murder.

“He always hated my people,” muttered Dimitra. “Called Papa a Communist. Of course, they weren't—Mama and Papa. Even in the thirties they didn't belong to the party. They were socialists, trade unionists,” she said proudly. “Papa was a presser in the garment district. Now Boris—his favorite American was Senator Joseph McCarthy, but then what can you expect of a man as mean as Boris?”

“You're always saying how mean he was, Mrs. Potemkin. Could you give us an example?” Leo asked.

She squinted at him. “Well, there was Lance. You'd think when I finally had a baby—I was forty-two when Lance was born—you'd think Boris would have been happy. But he got meaner than ever. Lance must have been three, maybe four, and I wanted to start saving money for his college. I could tell even then he was going to be special, a Chekhov, or an Einstein, maybe a Robert Redford.”

Elena nodded politely. She remembered Lance as being cute but no Robert Redford, and his secretarial job in the H.H.U. English Department didn't mark him as any Einstein. Now, Chekhov—maybe Lance wrote plays.

“You know what Boris did?” demanded Dimitra, highly incensed. “He took out a loan and built a bomb shelter in the back yard. To protect us from Communist H-bombs, he said. You'd think to hear Boris talk, my father was going to come down here in a Russian MIG and explode a bomb on top of us. What with paying off the house and the stupid bomb shelter, I never could put away any money for Lance.”

“How have relations been between your husband and your son in recent years, Dimitra?” asked Elena.

“What relations?” Dimitra wrapped her tray of cabbage rolls in foil, yanked open the top compartment of her refrigerator, and shoved the tray in. “Boris was the papa from hell, the Rasputin of fatherhood, the—”

“Yes, but specifically what—”

“He wanted Lance to be an engineer—not on trains, on buildings. Boris was a carpenter. Worked construction all his life, but he had to compete with the illegals from Mexico for jobs, so he never made good money. He wanted Lance to be one of the bosses. But Lance, he signed up to be an English major, so Boris stopped speaking to him. Two years later, he made my boy leave the house.”

“What was that quarrel over?” Elena asked.

“Oh, they just didn't get along,” said Dimitra evasively, her thin, veined hands patting and rolling, flying between the work surface and the tray. “Who could get along with Boris?” she muttered.

“Tell us about the czar's medal,” said Elena.

“Sure. Boris bragged about that medal to everyone who'd listen. The czar, the one the Communists killed, gave it to Boris' grandfather—for leading a bunch of Cossacks into the Pale and killing seventy-five Jews—grandfathers, women, children. Boris didn't like Jews either, but then he didn't like anyone.

“And the medal! You should have seen it. Seventy-five lives for a bit of green ribbon and a round coin-like thing. Wasn't even gold. Of course, Boris, he said it would be worth a fortune some day—when the Communists were gone. So after Gorbachev and Yeltsin, I said, ‘Boris, why don't you sell it?' ‘What, sell my grandfather's medal?' he says. ‘At least, put it in a safe deposit box,' I tell him. But not Boris. He says he's got a gun. Anyone tries to take the medal from him, he'll shoot them. But why would anyone want the ugly old thing? It's probably bad luck. Blood on it.” She paused, a smile of surprise and delight dawning. “You know, it's nice to say what I think for a change. You want to know about our family? I could talk for hours. Never got to before.”

Poor Dimitra, Elena thought, remembering how silent the woman had always been while Boris was alive. Now she couldn't stop talking. “Did Boris ever say how much the medal was worth?” Elena asked.

“It wasn't worth anything—except in his head.”

Could Boris have been shot for a worthless medal? Elena wondered. Someone heard him bragging about it, maybe thought it was gold, covered with jewels, got into the house, Boris pulled a gun, the thief took it away from him, shot him in the struggle or after forcing him to tell where the medal was. Or maybe when he saw that it was nothing special, the thief shot Boris for spite. Muggers did that. Beat up the victim because he didn't have any money. “How did you happen to notice it was missing, Dimitra?”

“I was looking in the desk for his life insurance policy and noticed the box was gone. Boris kept it in a fruitcake tin Amy Fogel gave us one Christmas.”

They could check the pawn shops and fences, Elena decided. She doubted anyone in Los Santos would pay the thief anything for it. As a result, some fence might be willing to get on her good side by giving her a name.

“How did you and Mr. Potemkin get along?” asked Leo.

“We did things his way. How do you think?” said Dimitra. “Never did anything I wanted to do. Wouldn't put my boy through college. He didn't even want me to see Lance. Soon as that first batch freezes, I'll take out six or eight for you and your mother, Elena.”

“Thank you,” said Elena. “You were saying about Boris.”

“He never wanted to go to the movies,” said Dimitra. “If it weren't for my hip and the fact that I never learned to drive, I think I'd go to a movie this afternoon. I loved the movies back home in New York. We had a Russian-language movie house. You probably didn't know that.”

“No, I didn't.” Maybe Dimitra had a pleasant surprise coming. If Omar hadn't fallen asleep again, he'd be along pretty soon to invite her to the movies.

“I saw Eugene Onegin there when I was fifteen. I was born in this country, but Russia looked just the way my baba described it. Long fields of snow. You should have seen the duel scene between Onegin and Lenski. Lenski's aria, it's the most beautiful music! You know it?” She glanced up from the cabbage rolls.

Neither Leo nor Elena did.

“Well, you come by some evening. I'll play it for you.” Then she sighed, her nostalgic smile fading. “I forgot. Boris broke my records. If I have any money on his insurance, maybe I'll go back to Coney Island and visit my family. See if there's anyone left.”

Elena felt a pang of sadness for the woman, who didn't even know whether she had family still living.

“'Fraid you can't leave town till your husband's murder's solved, ma'am,” Leo warned.

Dimitra glanced at him with no evidence of alarm. “Well, I don't suppose there'll be enough money for me to go, anyway. Just wishful thinking. I'm too old—too crippled up.”

“How did that happen, Dimitra—the broken hip?”

Dimitra hesitated. “I fell down the stairs to the bomb shelter.” Silence followed. Then she added, “During air raid practice.”

Air raid drills. Czar's medals. Communist plots. Boris must have been paranoid. And the rumors of abuse. Elena had to wonder whether Dimitra had been pushed. People hinted, but Dimitra wasn't admitting it. As open as she'd been about her dislike of her husband, wouldn't she have mentioned physical abuse if there had been any?

As Elena and Leo walked to the car, Elena said, “Someone could have killed him for the czar's medal.”

“It doesn't sound like a big prize to me,” said Leo.

“Still, we better check it out.” Elena told him about her interview with Omar Ashkenazi. “He could have done it. He was as happy to hear about Boris' death as Dimitra.”

“Maybe she asked him to kill her husband,” Leo suggested.

“I suppose that's possible,” said Elena.

“The Potemkins don't come off as a loving threesome,” said Leo. “And another thing. She was careful not to mention that her son's gay. Lance is the one we need to get hold of. If the old lady didn't kill the husband, probably the son did.”

“Still,” said Elena, “I think I'll run Omar's name through the computer. He claims to be pacifist, but who knows? We might find fifteen agg assaults.”